Animated Language

As a person who loved language (not wisely, but too well) to ever pay much attention to grammar, I quite enjoyed this. Ah, Stephen Fry, is there anything you can't do?



Watching the above reminded me of an animation of a Dadaist poem (by Kurt Schwitters) I saw years ago. This makes me happy.



Talk about defying the constraints of grammar. Dude.

Why I Live at the P.O. (pace E. Welty)

At the post office in Little Rock recently, I was behind an elderly man who had slowly shuffled in, at great expense, apparently, to his aged knees and hips. Reaching the desk, he complimented the clerk on her reliable smile (a frequent customer, apparently). She parried and then asked the pro forma questions about his package--about the size and shape of a shoebox, wrapped in brown paper, with an address written on it in large capital letters.

"Anything perishable, flammable, etc., etc. in your package?"

"No," he replied, "Just normal."

"Just normal?" she chuckled.

"It's ball point pens," he said.

"Pens. Okay."

"They can't be refilled, but they're too nice to throw away, so I'm sending them back to the company."

The clerk did a masterful job of controlling her eyebrows at this point.

I imagined the work this mailing represented to the old man: saving the pens up over years, finding the company address in the collection of phone books in the public library, wrapping the box, driving to the P.O. The futile gesture was the fruit of a mind dedicated to the idea that quality, even in a disposable item, must be retained in the world. There is no effective composting for design elegance, a way to retain the beauty after the object is ground up in the treads of a bulldozer.

The old man paid for his postage, and then shuffled out, carefully, moving on to the next task is his lengthy and patient list.

As long as there is a next task, there is life. Take note of this.